As the Coordinator of the Half-Jewish Network, the largest international organization for adult children and other descendants of intermarriage, I have protested against many ugly attacks on members of interfaith families. But the Masa video released last week - and then withdrawn after a firestorm of protest - shocked even me.
The video was sponsored through a partnership of Masa, the Jewish Agency and (incredibly) the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It showed "missing person" posters with photos of young Jews. The posters are placed in various European and American locations. These young Jews were apparently missing because - they intermarried.
The video was part of an advertising campaign to promote Masa's long-term study-in-Israel programs by urging Israelis with young Jewish relatives in the European Union or America to call Masa with those relatives' names, so Masa could persuade the young relatives to sign up for its programs and save them from intermarriage.
This video was counter-productive on so many levels, it is hard to know where to begin.
First, the video is being mocked by young Diaspora Jews with two Jewish parents on their blogs as a classic example of old-fashioned, out-of-date Israeli beliefs about the Diaspora.
Second, the choice of a kidnapping theme in an advertising video was disastrous. Diaspora intermarried couples meet socially and fall in love. Young intermarried Jews viewing the video have reacted with derision in the Jewish blogosphere to depictions of themselves as helpless Jews, presumably kidnapped by armed Gentiles.
Third, adult children of intermarriage, like myself, have reacted very badly to the video. There have been a number of extremely angry messages from members of the Half-Jewish Network, and from other adult children of intermarriage posting in the general Jewish blogosphere, most of whom are young.
Aren't young Diaspora Jews the very youth demographic Masa wishes to attract?
But apparently no one told Masa - or the Jewish Agency - or Prime Minister Netanyahu's office - that adult children of intermarriage in America now live as Jews in large numbers - we are 48% of all college-age American Jews - or that depicting our intermarried Jewish parents as kidnapping victims is not the best way to interest us in long-term study in Israel. How many of us will want to attend Masa programs now?
Those of us adult children of intermarriage who wish to live as Jews did not need to be insulted by this video. We already face enough obstacles to living as Jews.
In the Diaspora, the adult children of intermarriage face widespread snubs, neglect and sometimes open and covert hostility from some Jewish secular and spiritual groups, including dissident segments within otherwise liberal Jewish organizations that have never wholly accepted Jewish outreach policies. This poor treatment of us is partially counter-balanced by some Jewish communities' interfaith family outreach efforts.
But the situation of adult children of intermarriage and their intermarried parents in Israel is even worse.
Why, I wondered, did the Masa video not address Israel's growing intermarriage rate? Would a video be shown on Israeli television exhibiting intermarried Russian Israeli Jews as "missing" due to intermarriage? I doubt it. The "mixed families" of Israel, caught in a web of social and legal discrimination, might finally mutiny, and refuse to pay taxes or serve in the IDF.
I thought about my colleagues at three Israeli Jewish organizations struggling for the rights of interfaith families in Israel - IRAC, the Association for the Rights of Mixed Families, and the New Family. They work very hard, on very small budgets, to help Israeli intermarried Jews and their adult children fight their second-class citizen status in the courts and the Knesset, obtain conversions, integrate into Israeli society, and learn about Judaism.
Instead of spending money trying to prevent Diaspora Jews from intermarrying - when intermarried Jews are served, at least in America, by a growing number of Jewish outreach organizations -- would it not be better for the money to be spent in Israel on three Israeli Jewish organizations trying to help the thousands of intermarried Israeli Jews and their adult children and grandchildren?
*Note from IRAC staff: Since this article was written, the heads of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism and the Israel Religious Action Center submitted a formal complaint to the head of the Jewish Agency. Click here to read more. MASA has already taken the video down from its website and stopped running the ad as a result of the overwhelmingly negative response that it drew.
INTERMARRIED JEWS ARE NOT VICTIMS OF KIDNAPPERS | 17.09. 2009
